NEW DELHI: For the past several weeks, Ms Sonia Gandhi, her son Rahul Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have been feigning outrage over the Opposition's soft-on-terror charge. Their collective shoulder-shrugging on the issue found predictable support from party mega-phones and loose-lipped "opinion makers".

But the Manmohan Singh government will now have an even harder time explaining its handling of internal security issues. The audacious jehadi attack on Mumbai has exposed not just the ill-preparedness of the security system but a complete lack of plan to fight the menace.

The Congress has only itself to blame as it has been celebrating the in-sane recklessness of the home minister and the security establishment that functions directly under the prime minister. The security of the nation was being allowed to be handled by men who are opposed to most of the tools that the agencies use for tackling terror; the party was in complete agreement that there was no need for a tough anti-terror law; its leaders have been routinely speaking out against inter-rogation techniques that anti-terror agencies routinely use worldwide; why, the ruling alliance would not even countenance the use of harsh language against jehadis.

By the home minister's own admission at the Union Cabinet meeting this morning, the attack on Mumbai was a planned one with the je-hadi elements even setting up "control room" of sorts in the two five-star hotels that were the targets of attack. There are also reports that the attackers came through the sea route. Incidentally, the National Security Advisor MK Narayanan has been "educating" the country about terrorists using sea routes for the past three years. It may be re-called that US Admiral Timothy J Keating, who was in Delhi, had sug-gested that India introduce some counter-measures such as Container Security Initiative to prevent terrorists' movement in those areas.

The Centre and leadership can be expected to lay the blame on the lack of "actionable intelligence" from the agencies. The prime minister has been making this point in all his recent internal security interven-tion s from seminar halls of the Capital.

But are the officers free to collect information about saboteurs? Not a chance. The prime minister had recently repeated that such an exer-cise must pass the test of political correctness. "A major challenge be-fore the police will be restoring the faith of the people -- specially those belonging to religious and ethnic minorities and the weaker sec-tions -- in the impartiality and effectiveness of the police.